Armageddon Blues

by Daniel Keys Moran

  None of the above is important.

  She has eyes. Even in the twentieth century Gregorian, her eyes are exceptional. The irises are silver. They have always been silver, of course, but now they are something else and more: a maelstrom of swirling color, silver and blue and pink and purple and green and gold-red, but some still only silver when faced with the lens of a camera; the effect is not reproducible.

  (Clan Silver-Eyes prospered where the Real Indians and the barbarians did not, at least partially because of the silver irises; they were quite lovely, true, but they also detected abnormal radiation levels quite capably, as a sort of staccato flashing in their peripheral vision. After the Big Crunch, this became a survival mechanism.)

  Jalian’s eyes can and do cause almost instant desire in any functioning male, and in not a few women besides. They are the eyes of someone who has seen too much and knows too much, and knows that there is nothing she can do about what she knows.

  Because, of course, Armageddon is coming.

  Jalian d'Arsennette is viewed, by the twentieth century, as a tall, rather elfin beauty; a woman whom destiny rides like a demon.

  She has the strange habit of not meeting other people's eyes.

  DATELINE 712 A.B.C.

  Jalian pushed herself, moving through the light woods nonetheless. The sun, striking down through the trees, rarely touched her; she was a silvered shadow, mingling with the other shadows of morning. The light did not find her, she made no sound. It would have taken an Elder Hunter to track her; no lesser tracker would have discerned any trail.

  It was late morning when Jalian reached the hills. There was no cover in the hills to compare with that in the forests; automatically she made the most of the sketchy scrub, and refrained from worrying about it. She would make it across the hills or she would not.

  It was near noon when she reached the place.

  Ruins of the old world lay all about them, wherever one looked. Old buildings, the frames of karz; even, in some places, where ancient builders had lined concrete with polymer bases, stretches of good roads. Still, for Jalian, none of these, not even the few good roads, matched the straight and clean and serene beauty of her place:

  The Big Road.

  Like the path of a thrown knife, the Big Road stretched away as far as the eye could see, west and north toward the far hills that ringed the other end of the valley, toward the mountains that legend said the Clan had walked down from in the days after the Big Crunch. For as far as Jalian could see, the Big Road ran true.

  The Big Road, where Jalian came to it, was bordered by one of the largest and worst of the Burns. If one had known the Big Road before the bombs fell, that person might have been able to tell Jalian that the Big Road was not supposed to be partially melted; but there was nobody to tell Jalian that, and she supposed that the Big Road had always been that way.

  (Even before the missiles came burning from the sky, this spot had held a laboratory in which there were radioactive materials stored for testing. When the bombs went down and then up again, strange things had happened there.) That was more than seven centuries ago; to Jalian's eyes, the Burn still sparkled faintly.

  Jalian stood at the spot where she usually ascended to the Big Road.

  It was a desolate area at the edge of the concrete, where a plant that resembled ivy had survived the radiation long enough to breach the Big Road's protective guardrail. Dirt and dust, working their ways into the body of the dead ivy mutant, had formed a small, natural incline that Jalian was able to scramble up and make her way onto the concrete of the Big Road itself. She paused at the edge of the Big Road, her feet still on dirt but only a step away from the concrete.

  This would be only the second time that Jalian had set foot on the Big Road.

  The first time, one of the Hunters—Jalian could not remember who it had been, except that it was not an Elder Hunter because she did not wear the white tunic of an Elder Hunter—had taken a group of children from the Girls' House with her on routine patrol of Silver-Eyes borders. The patrol had made camp at the edge of the hills, while the four- and five- and six-year-olds scrambled over the Big Road. Later, one of the younger women in the patrol told the children about the land of gods and demons at its end.

  Then she had tried to run away, and been caught by Ralesh.

  This time, Jalian had a third-day start. They would not catch her.

  They would not.

  The twentieth century, as viewed by Jalian d'Arsenette, consists of freeways.

  (The twentieth century saw the birth of the thermoexplosive and the freeway. Jalian could almost forgive one for the other.)

  (Almost.)

  DATELINE 712 A.B.C.

  One step, and then two, and Jalian stood for a frozen timemoment on the concrete of the Big Road itself.

  Then the paralysis broke, and, shivering slightly, Jalian walked to the center of the road, where the melted ruin of a lane divider stood a lonely vigil.

  The freeway ran away from her, straight and true and clean, protected as though by the gods. (The winds, here, were too sporadic to erode much. Plants, which in other places grew up through the asphalt and crumbled the manmade structures, here stood no chance against the radioactive Burn. The freeway itself, cambered from the center, was regularly cleaned of the dirt that built up on its surface by the summer rains.)

  At the age of six, to Jalian d'Arsennette, it made sense that the Big Road was protected by the gods. (Or the demons, perhaps, although Jalian did not like to think about that.)

  For how long Jalian simply stood on the Big Road, the sun burning down on her, her eyes seeking into the distance for the end of the Big Road, she never knew. She came back from infinity, slowly, with the thoughts in her mind: Mountains beside me, desert behind me. Forest and hills and sun, and the Big Road far ahead…

  That moment, her thin body touched with the ecstasy of a dimly perceived greater reality, Jalian remembered for the rest of her life.

  The moment ended and she ran.

  Jalian had not made it to the end of the Big Road when she was five because she had squandered her lead time. This time she would not make that mistake.

  Run and run and run…

  The freeway stretched before her; a road of possibilities.

  Georges Mordreaux is an interesting man. Aside from the fact that entropy tends to decrease in his vicinity, there are eight of him.

  Yes, eight. Not all on the same timeline, of course. (It is a shame, but Georges will not admit to any of the eight having been present during the explosion of a thermonuclear weapon. He may be lying, of course; humans are notorious liars. Evidence suggests that he may be engaging in this common human pastime. For reasons too lengthy to go into here, asking any of the other seven directly would be… difficult.)

  (Georges Mordreaux; of the base timeline that led to divergence 1962, did once meet Einstein. This is not the same as being present when a thermonuclear weapon is exploded, but it is the closest that Georges is willing to admit to. The author, commenting in a negative fashion on the subject, has been blessed with the response, "Ah, well.")

  (There are times when the author agrees with Georges that he is in some ways a very shallow fellow.)

  (All eight of him.)

  DATELINE 712 A.B.C.

  Jalian ran automatically. Her body pushed itself without conscious attention. She was thinking about the end of the Big Road, and what she would find there. It would, she thought, be a strange place indeed… something with bright, bright colors, and loud noises. Very loud.

  Jalian liked loud noises.

  With a shock more immense than anything she had every felt before in her young life, Jalian focused on an object some ways ahead of her. There was something on the Big Road. Her legs stumbled, then stopped. She stood there in the middle of the old freeway, her chest heaving, her short brown tunic splotchy with sweat, looking at the building that had grown up on her freeway.

  She stood in the sun, quiet and motionless but
for her breathing, for two minutes that stretched into three. Once she drew her knife from its sheath; then, looking back to the large building, she shook her head against the silliness and put it back with an impatient movement. Jalian, even at the age of six, knew the uses of a knife.

  The action broke her paralysis, and Jalian found a strange, powerful fury growing in her. Here, in her holy place, on her Big Road, someone had grown a building.

  The six-year-old Jalian d'Arsennette, even through the worst anger that she had ever experienced in her life, knew there was nothing she could do about the building on her Big Road. She backed away from the building a few steps, eyes still locked to it; then, reluctantly, turned and began the long run back to the Clan House. She would be home nearly a twelfth-day before she would be needed for the Ceremony meal, but that was of no account. When she told Ralesh what she had done, she would be badly punished perhaps even ceremonially scarred; but Jalian's mother would do something about the tall, thin building that had grown up on Jalian's Big Road.

  Jalian d'Arsennette had no way of knowing that the "building" was a starship.

  DATELINE 1968 GREGORIAN.

  Georges Mordreaux sat behind the wheel of a green '66 Camaro. He was traveling north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Georges Mordreaux was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with cheerful nondescript features, light blue eyes and light brown hair. He smiled a lot.

  The Camaro ran smoothly, with the sort of leashed power that a jet pilot might have recognized, but which was utterly out of place in a green 1966 model Camaro. (Or any other color Camaro.) Both the passenger's and driver's windows were down, and wind was blasting through the car. The air conditioner was on. So was the heater.

  The machine ran… well, better than new was the term that came immediately to Georges' mind. Georges did not think that the car would break the sound barrier, even if he pushed it. The car was too aerodynamically inefficient. Georges had owned the car for two weeks now. He'd bought it from a used-car dealer in New Jersey who swore that it had been driven by a retired couple who simply liked Camaros. Georges had not put gasoline into the car once on the way west.

  "Better than new" was probably the correct term. Georges whistled as he drove. He was not very good at it, and besides, the car radio was competing; the Beatles were singing "I Want To Hold Your Hand." Georges was whistling "Marseillaise." It did not occur to him to turn the radio off. (To be fair, it is not likely that he could have turned the radio off.)

  Georges whistled, driving north. The Pacific Ocean sparkled in the sunshine off to his left. He smiled quite a lot.

  How likely is it that the world's only time traveler would encounter Georges Mordreaux?

  Not very. But then, there are things that are more improbable. That an object should spontaneously gain more energy, assume a more orderly pattern, is vastly more unlikely-and yet, still possible. In a world ruled by quanmechanics, there are no certainties; entropy is a function of probability theory.

  One might best consider Georges Mordreaux as an improbability locus.

  There.

  Forty miles north of San Luis Obispo, Georges Mordreaux saw a hitchhiker walking briskly along the right shoulder of the highway. A second closer look altered his impression slightly. Walking along the roadside, yes; but she was not a hitchhiker. She paid no attention to the cars skimming by her on the freeway.

  The drivers passing her certainly paid attention to her; they were almost unable to do otherwise. She stood out from her surroundings like a Corvichi fusion torch at night. She was dressed in a white jumpsuit, and carried a light blue satchel on one shoulder. Her hair hung to the small of her back, long and straight and undeniably white, reflecting the sunlight brilliantly. Her skin, where the rolled sleeves of the jumpsuit showed the flesh of the arms, was bleached-white, with little pink in its makeup. The jumpsuit legs were tucked into the tops of calf-high black boots.

  Georges smiled to himself absently, and brought the Camaro to a halt next to the girl. He leaned over and called out through the right-hand window.

  "Do you need a ride, miss?"

  The girl continued to walk when he stopped the car; she did not turn when he spoke to her, in a voice that held faint traces of a French accent.

  Georges called, "Miss?" a bit more loudly.

  Jalian d'Arsennette y ken Selvren turned around, intending to inform this stranger that she was quite content walking. She would do so in the iciest tone of voice of which she was capable, which was considerably so

  /light blue eyes smiling at me and there is power that shines on him and pours from him broad shoulders plain face and the power the power he is smiling at me…/

  /silver eyes…/

  when something strange happened.

  "Freeways," said' Jalian d'Arsennette, in an accent that Georges had never heard the like of before, with a voice so soft and clear that it sounded like running water, "were not made to be walked upon."

  Georges got out of the car, and Jalian watched him, waiting; not unsure or confused or wondering, simply waiting for what would happen next.

  Georges Mordreaux stood at the side of the still-running green Camaro, looking at the girl who stood at the edge of the cement, on a small stretch of gravel, who was looking back at him with very silver eyes, and suddenly he was more in love than he had been since the age of nineteen. You know, that was in 1731.

  DATELINE 1969 GREGORIAN.

  Ralesh d'Arsennette y ken Selvren, Eldest Hunter of Clan Silver-Eyes, lay comatose in the hospital that the ambulance had taken her to. The doctors who examined her fully expected her to die. Her entire system was in shock; she appeared to have suffered radiation burns of some sort.

  Her personal effects the doctors found vastly strange: a white overtunic and white leggings, three knives, and two devices that they found themselves unable to understand in any regard. One of the gadgets looked like a meter of some sort, or a compass; the other looked like a hand grenade. The local police were still debating whether or not they ought to call in the FBI, two days after Ralesh had been admitted.

  For two days, while the police argued among themselves, Ralesh lay in a coma, a glucose solution dripping slowly into her veins.

  On the third day, the silver-eyed freak was gone from her room in intensive care, and her personal effects were missing from storage.

  In place of the items that she took, the Eldest Hunter of Clan Silver-Eyes left two things: a male intern and a female nurse. The nurse had been tied and gagged and knocked unconscious. The intern, who had simply not been born the right sex, had his throat cut from ear to ear.

  DATELINE 1968 GREGORIAN.

  "Walk?" asked Georges blankly. "On the freeway?"

  An eighteen-wheeler blasted by them. The wind sent Jalian's hair streaming backward. She nodded silently. "Walk on the freeway," Georges repeated. He considered the idea. "Where are you headed?"

  "Anywhere." Jalian shrugged. "Nowhere. One place seems as good as another, as long as it can be reached over a freeway. The freeways," she added, "the freeways are beautiful."

  "What are you?" Georges was staring at her.

  Jalian studied him, without meeting his eyes particularly "I might ask you the same question… I'm a wanderer. I walk the freeways, and I wait for the fires that you destroyed yourselves with. There are," she said with the gravest expression Georges had yet seen on her, "thirty-years until Armageddon."

  "Thirty-eight—what do you mean?"

  Jalian said abruptly, "I return your question. What are you? You are unlike any male I have ever known. You are much like a person," she said courteously.

  "Well," said Georges. "Thank you… Where are you from? I don't recognize your accent." Jalian’s lips parted as though to reply, then closed. She made a gesture of helplessness, and turned to leave. She stopped in the act and said to Georges, "There is a bridge on my map. It is…" She paused, converting time units in her head, "…fifteen minutes' walk from here. I will wait for you there, for a little while." She g
estured to the car, somehow managing to convey supreme contempt. "Do not come in that, if you come." She began walking without waiting for a reply.

  Georges watched the retreating figure for a long time,. until she had passed from sight. He was horribly tempted to get back in the car and leave and never be faced with this white-haired woman again.

  Georges Mordreaux tended to think of himself as something a cut above the ordinary mortal, almost semi-divine, and it was a fact that Georges tended to awe people. It was strange to find someone who had the ability to set herself up as his equal on their first meeting.

  It was a long time before he started after her, on foot. Behind him, the Camaro's engine began to falter.

  Jalian d'Arsennette and Georges Mordreaux stood at the edge of the bridge. A small, nearly dry river passed underneath. Far overhead, a front of dark, rain-heavy cumulus clouds moved toward the bridge. Second by second, its shadow killed the sunlight on the moving water.

  "I like bridges the best," said Jalian. Her hands were resting, on the guardrail. "There were no bridges on the Big Road, not even any places where bridges used to be." Beneath them, the murmur of the river was barely audible. Georges reached out, and ran one finger along the profile of her jaw. "The first time I came to a bridge, I was almost afraid to cross it."

  Georges sighed. "You know I don't have any idea at all what you're talking about?" Jalian did not reply. Georges whispered, "Look at me."

  Jalian kept her eyes averted. She was looking at the guardrails of the bridge. The rails were made of iron, and were badly rusted. They reached to Jalian's waist. Jalian ran her hands over the rough metal, as though she were studying the texture and shape. After a long and stretching silence, she said, "What is your name?"